the "internet book" edition

Somehow, of late, I went on an Internet Book spree, and read more or less back to back four books that were written as offshoots to blogs or companions to blogs or by people who write blogs or in some way were blog and or internet related. There's this whole synergy thing happening, with writers and the internet and writers on the internet and magical books that emerge from the internet by writers who wrote and or write on the internet. You may have heard of it. It's all crazy.

I did not, deliberately and with great care, choose a theme for my recent reading, but it was there, and who ignores serendipity? Certainly not me, because I am not a communist. So see below.

Internet Book #3: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Cory Doctorow

This is somehow related to the internet. Because, uh, he has a blog? And he posted the book online? And he's got an online presence? Something. So it's not related to the internet in the same way the other books I've read are directly related to personal sites and personal writing, fine. Fine! I didn't want to mess up a perfectly good theme, okay? Okay.

So this is a good old-fashioned science-fiction, except it's not exactly old-fashioned, and it's pretty hilarious, and I would call it post-modern, if I had any idea, any more, what postmodern is supposed to mean.

It feels like a punk kid's satire of your standard "this is what the future will become!" kind of re-imagining, except that it also seems totally serious, and he seems to love his subject, and his world, his future. It's a fast and fun and incredibly imaginative read, and even though I do not generally point to the sci-fi zone on the spec fic scale, I liked it immensely.

Internet Book # 2 -To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him

Gwen Zepeda

This is a collection of memoir kinds of pieces, personal essays and short stories and cartoons and, you know, things. It's animated by Gwen's viciously powerful voice, her sharp opinions, her reality kind of, and it is at its best when it is not reproducing or rewriting entries she's posted her website, or her slightly strange and slightly rough stories, but when she's telling her own personal story.

It started strong, and powerful and like a memoir, and it was a pleasure to read, and then it seemed to become reprints or rewrites from her website, and then it became short stories which were, at their best, really imaginative and at their worst, not particularly compelling.

She's funny and she's candid and she's fierce and she's angry and her voice is really amazing, when she harnesses it. But this felt disappointingly like a mishmash – like she was scrambling to get material together when she was offered a book contract. I would have preferred something not safely homogeneous, no, but something with some kind of internal logic, some kind of organizing principle that made sense. Maybe that is a weird thing to want from a book. Maybe it is weird to want someone to have given you their life story.

Her next project is a novel and I am looking forward to that, because while I was really frustrated with this book and its jumping and flailing and uneveness, I am a fan of her voice.

Internet book #1 – Tales from the Scale

The first of these turned out to be Tales from the Scale, put together by Erin Shea. I would not have bought it if a friend of mine, who is mo pie, had not been one of the writers – it's the kind of book that ordinarily makes me itch. It's calling itself a self-help book, and it's a collection of personal essays about women who are weighing in "on Thunder Thighs, Cheese Fries, and Feeling Good…at Any Size" and that, plus the picture on the cover, with the legs and the scale and the hilariously monogrammed towel and the pun - get it? WEIGHING IN? HA! - would have sent me flying away from it, probably laughing hysterically.

I was also kind of deeply unsure about the whole idea of tapping weight loss bloggers to provide essays that were more or less exactly the kind of essays you were going to find on their websites already. And reading informal personal essay after informal personal essay after informal personal essay about being fat and how sad it all was sounded – daunting. Daunting is a good word.

But my friend mo is a talented writer, and I was proud she was tapped for this, and I thought she would rise above and beyond the whole weird concept, and so I picked it up, and I read it pretty quickly and steadily, even though it was really, really embarrassing to carry around.

And so. It remains a really weird concept. I do not see where the self-help comes in. I am not sure why Erin is listed as the author and gets the acknowledgements page and her face on the back and the hilarious towel monogramming, when she is only one of the essayists in this book, and hers are among the least compelling, frequently feeling somewhat overdramatic and a little bit pretentious.

The book doesn't hang together as a book, the categories the book is divided into seem arbitrarily assigned, and I'm not sure, again, what the point was, but these women, who are writing their stories with an admirable kind of honesty (which you note on their individual websites! And for free!) are engaging and smart and you feel for them.

I found I liked these people who were struggling, and I identified with some parts of their stories and furrowed my brow at other parts and sometimes, the stories seemed distressingly similar (though the voices rarely ever were – particularly mo's and shauna's and robyn's). And I was pleased that I can continue to be proud of being mo's friend, and not have to mumble polite inanities when I talk to her about her book, because her essays were terrific. They stood out for their sense of humor and her amazing attitude, and also for the way she said that tits are a fat girl's ace in the hole which is so true and because she is positive and also funny. Go, mo.

Overall, I think this is another example of how translating from the internet into print form can go horribly, terribly wrong, which is a shame, because I really wanted to like it, and not be totally befuddled by it.